Book Review: Forget You by Jennifer Echols

Zoey is the captain of the varsity swim team at her school. She’s a senior and things should be going great for her but instead her life is falling apart. Her dad left her mom to go have a baby with another woman. Her mom tries to commit suicide and she’s forced to go live with her father her treats her as an inconvenience in her new life.

Her first night at her dad’s new place she goes out to a party, loses her virginity to one of her friends, and all of a sudden Doug, a boy that has hated her for years, is looking for her. Could things get any worse? Well, the next weekend things do. Brandon isn’t the attentive boyfriend she thought he would be. At the football game the swim teams decides to crash the football party. It’s the last thing she remembers before waking up to Doug’s yells. He hauls her out of the wrecked car and things seemed to have changed between them.

Problem is Zoey doesn’t remember any of it. She can’t tell her dad because it will ruin his trip to Hawaii and he threatens to send her to the “loony bin” with her mother. So she tries to hide and still figure out what the hell happened that night.

This novel gave me all sorts of mixed feelings. On one hand I liked the writing. It flowed great and I liked the pacing. On the other hand I wanted to smack Zoey every 5 seconds after she sleeps with Brandon, who up until that point was her friend that called for advice on his very numerous “girlfriends” that he dated and dropped. So why the hell would she think she would be any different. She keeps thinking he’s her boyfriend and he keeps avoiding her. Wake up girl!

And then there’s her father who, I think, was the top runner for Worst Father of the Year. He abandons her after she’s had a major head injury in a serious car crash to got Hawaii and tells her not to screw things up for him, like she’s s nuisance. I hated him with a passion. But for the story it gets him out of the picture.

The character I loved the most was Doug, the misunderstood supposed “bad boy” who has a secret thing for Zoey. He once asked her homecoming during swim practice when they were in 9th grade but then he got arrested and thrown in juvie. He came back different and after that they were enemies. Later you learn the real truth and my heart just broke for him. He was such a sweet guy who just had a crappy lot in life.

I gave the story only 4 stars mostly because of Zoey. She had to be the biggest idiot ever. To think Brandon ever wanted her as more than an easy lay and for not telling anyone about her very serious amnesia from her very serious head injury. She kept it all in and kept looking like an idiot. No, she was an idiot. Did I mention I wanted to slap her. She drove me nuts through the whole book. Especially when she kept pushing Doug away because she was “with” Brandon even though the guy never called. Ugh.

But the story itself was interesting as Zoey pieced together the night she couldn’t remember and her friendship with Doug grew. There was a lot of angst which I love so it gets an AWWW from me.